Dish Denim Gastown Pop-Up

In the first installment of our summer denim series: the ultimate West Coast jean you’ve been waiting for.

June 25, 2015

“We’re trying to combat a generation that has grown up in leggings, not jeans,” explains Gary Lenett, co-founder of Dish & DU/ER performance denim. With over 25 years in the denim industry, it’s of little surprise that he’s right. In a city that finds it appropriate to wear Lululemon to dinner—in a moist climate, no less—it would be fair to say Vancouver is perhaps not denim’s most natural habitat.

But Lenett is out to combat that notion. By partnering with a New York producer that’s currently sports-clothing brand Under Armour’s largest supplier, Lenett and his hand-picked team have created a material that combines Coolmax and Tencel technology to offer moisture management, temperature control, and anti-bacterial properties.

The Vancouver-born entrepreneur is also at the forefront of new methods that protect men against cellphone radiation by effectively lining jeans pockets, and techniques that promote reflective branding in an effort to make cyclists more visible to motorists. Though these jeans might sound like a copyright infringement of the Iron Man suit, the design is on-trend enough to be worthy of any Main Street regular. (Think straight lines, overalls, denim shirts, and light washes.)

“It’s all about getting the jeans on people,” says Lenett of his North American pop-up plan. “It’s not that you have to wear them to work and then go hiking, but that you can if you want to. It’s the lifestyle options the jeans can offer.”

The Vancouver shop is the first of many scheduled pop-ups that will also hit Seattle, Portland, and New York.

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